This blog was created for Niles Animal Hospital & Bird Medical Center by Peter S. Sakas DVM in an effort to provide information & discussion about animal related issues. It may move into some eccentric directions on occasion if the mood strikes me as I get more comfortable in this form of communication. I am open to suggestions & comments about the blog. Also view our hospital website www.nilesanimalhospital.com or Facebook page Niles Animal Hospital and Bird Medical Center.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Plastic Bag Ban Endangers Health! (You Just Can't Win)

Sheesh, you just can't win!

From Newsmax.

Report: Plastic Bag Ban Endangers Health
The ban on plastic grocery bags enacted in San
Francisco and several other California communities has an unexpected
side effect — an increase in food-borne illnesses, emergency room
visits, and even deaths.
The culprit: the reusable grocery bags that
shoppers use instead, which are breeding grounds for E. coli and other
harmful bacteria, according to a new report by university researchers.

San Francisco County enacted a ban on
non-compostable plastic bags at large grocery stores and drug stores in
2007, and extended it to all retail establishments in early 2012. Los
Angeles followed suit in 2012, as did several other California
communities including Malibu and Palo Alto.

The bans were designed to reduce litter and
threats to marine life posed by discarded bags, and encourage the use of
reusable grocery bags.

But studies “suggest that reusable grocery bags
harbor harmful bacteria, the most important of which is E. coli,” say
Jonathan Klick, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania,
and Joshua D. Wright, a professor at the George Mason University School
of Law and Department of Economics.

“If individuals fail to clean their reusable
bags, these bacteria may lead to contamination of the food transported
in the bags. Such contamination has the potential to lead to health
problems and even death.”
Tests of randomly selected reusable grocery bags found coliform bacteria in 51 percent of them, and E. coli in 8 percent.

According to the researchers’ report, which was
released by the Social Science Research Network, most users did not use
separate bags for meats and vegetables, 97 percent said they never
washed their bags, and bacteria appeared to grow at a faster rate when
the bags were stored in car trunks.

When the researchers analyzed data related to E.
coli infections, the results were troubling: “The San Francisco County
ban is associated with a statistically significant and particularly
large increase in ER visits for E. coli infections,” they said — a rise
of at least 25 percent.

In addition, “the San Francisco County ban is associated with a 46 percent increase in deaths from food-borne illnesses.”

Their conclusion: “We find that both deaths and ER visits spiked as soon as the ban went into effect.

“Conservative estimates of the costs and benefits
of the San Francisco plastic bag ban suggest the health risks they
impose are not likely offset by environmental benefits.”